Tabla de contenidos para December 2019 en Procycling

EDITOR There’s nothing quite like realising that the current Tour de France champion is 22 to make you feel old. In case that’s not enough, a rider aged 20 recently came third in the Vuelta (and 22 seconds away from second, though the interesting caveat to that is that the runner-up, Alejandro Valverde, is 39). There are two riders born in 2000 both currently ranked in the top 100 cyclists in the world on Cqranking and Procyclingstats – Remco Evenepoel on the men’s side and Franziska Koch on the women’s. Something is afoot in our sport. Cycling wisdom used to dictate that riders had to serve apprenticeships and spend their early 20s developing the strength and endurance to be able to win big races. Of course, there have always been…

STAFF WRITER How do you follow the race dubbed the most exciting edition of the Tour de France in decades? Tour organisers AS0 may have been delighted with the reception this year's race got from fans, riders and the media alike; a close GC battle that went down to the final days, a route that created excitement and intrigue on every stage, and - the holy grail - French success that gave the home nation truly something to get excited about. But the problem with good things is that people invariably want more of them, and anything other than more of the same in 2020 might now be viewed as a disappointment. For the second year in a row, Christian Prudhomme unveiled a route that is high on climbing metres…

Cofidis has been undergoing a lean spell at the Tour de France, with no stage win since 2008. However, Cofidis is also a long-standing supporter of the Vuelta a España, and Spain has been a much happier hunting ground for the team than France. Since their last Tour stage win, Cofidis has taken eight stages and five victories in the KoM classification, including one by the operator of the bike pictured to the right, Nicolas Edet. Edet rode this particular Kuota Khan Team Edition with distinction in this year’s race - he infiltrated a break on stage 8 and donned the leader’s red jersey for a day. According to Kuota, the main triangle of the carbon frame maximises lateral and vertical stiffness, while the wide top tube keeps the ride…

FDJ - NOUVELLE AQUITAINE The decision to start the World Championships road race was definitely setting myself a very hard challenge, after a mere month back training following my three-month long injury break. I had just one race in the legs the week before, and then it was ‘go time’. In the back of my head, I always had the hope to participate and if I was to race again this year it was because I really wanted to soak up the atmosphere of a championship. I think it was my 12th consecutive Worlds start, too. It would have felt so strange to miss a World Championships for me. I went over to Yorkshire in May to do a reconnaissance of the whole circuit, so I knew exactly how brutal…

To reach the start line of the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec, riders must scale the Grande Allée, the graceful street that rises stiffly behind the promontory overlooking the Saint Lawrence River. Most do so gently, twiddling their lowest gears. Remco Evenepoel reports for duty with more vigour, every sinew twitching as he bounds up the slope in the big ring. At the start, Evenepoel draws up alongside Micha? Kwiatkowski, who is distractedly adjusting his power meter, and he playfully thumps a fist in greeting on the ex-world champ’s stem. “How’s the form?” Evenepoel chirps. Kwiatkowski exaggerates a grimace and the youngster laughs heartily. Back in the 1990s, when Evenepoel’s father Patrick was a rider at Collstrop, a first-year professional typically wouldn’t dare approach a grandee of the peloton, but…

Elia Viviani is a perfectionist. For years he has been dreaming of winning a Tour de France stage, of returning to the race where he hadn’t started since 2014 and finally clinching a victory, one that would confirm he is among cycling’s top sprinters and the fastest in the world. Not that we didn’t know already: as of last year, Viviani already had multiple victories in the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España, but the Tour is a different beast, the competition is the strongest of the year, at the highest level, and winning there was the obvious target for him; the natural next step. So after Viviani finally clinched the elusive win on stage 4 of the race in Nancy this year, you’d expect he’d be elated and eager…

A Tour de France bereft of the rider who had dominated it for the previous five years, lacking the presence of a ‘patron’ resulting in an unpredictable and uncontrolled three weeks of racing. A Tour de France that ended up with one of its youngest ever winners, a riders who had already been earmarked for future glory by a highly successful team boss. A Tour with a final winner who had been groomed in an all-conquering team that had won five Tours in recent years, and who was expected - on the back of his Tour triumph - to dominate the sport for years to come. A Tour with a French hero, who abandoned in tears and in pain late on in the race at a time when he looked…

KEEP AN EYE ON PEDERSEN The men’s road race at the 2019 Worlds may be the last time Mads Pedersen gets to make an innocuous late-race attack. The Dane has form in this arena. In the 2018 Tour of Flanders, he joined an attack with Magnus Cort, Sebastian Langeveld and Dylan van Baarle with 50km to go to bridge to the remnants of the early break. Their lead never went much above 30 seconds. But they’d kept a steady, strong effort going, while the favourites’ group had split and reformed several times. Niki Terpstra attacked after the Kruisberg and rode past, but Pedersen was able to sit in for a distance and then defend his second place to the finish. If he’d stayed with the favourites, he’d likely have been…

MAURI VANSEVENANT After finishing sixth in Avenir, the 20-year-old Belgian landed a contract with Deceuninck-Quick Step starting next July. His father is former pro Wim Vansevenant. FRED WRIGHT The Briton, 20, won a stage in Avenir from a reduced sprint. He joined CCC as a stagiaire this autumn and rode the Deutschland Tour with the team. CLÉMENT CHAMPOUSSIN The Frenchman caught the eye of Ag2r La Mondiale with results including fourth at Avenir, third at Ronde de l’Isard and second at Il Piccolo Lombardia.…

JUMBO - VISMA Creeping over the finish line at Il Lombardia always seems to drag up strange emotions. The season is done: no more suffering; no more power meters or weight scales. I’ve arrived at the only part of the year that I am truly free. More than anything, I’m free from my own ambition. On the other hand the racing is over and I’m suddenly hit by everything I didn’t achieve. But after six hours in the saddle I didn’t have enough energy or patience to get too philosophical and within 20 minutes I was enjoying a beer, lakeside, with my girlfriend. Most riders launch into the off-season with a trip to a beach but over the last few years I’ve made a habit of taking drastic action to…

The British may, like the Inuit with snow, have 50 different words for ‘rain’, but whichever one was used at the Yorkshire Worlds, there was only one adjective invariably preceding it, and it began with ‘f’. World Championships exist over the continuum of a week, but they are eventually reduced to images in the minds of cycling fans. Alejandro Valverde finally winning a rainbow jersey in Innsbruck 2018, the fjords and bays of Bergen 2017, or the wind-blasted echelons and deserts of Qatar 2016. The defining image of Yorkshire 2019 came early, when the bike being ridden by Danish rider Johan Price-Pejtersen hit a shin-deep patch of standing rainwater on the men’s U23 time trial route on the Tuesday. Water is around 800 times more dense than air; the bike…

You were the youngest rider in the 2018 Tour de France and the second youngest in the 2019 edition. Does winning so much at your age make you more relaxed, because you’ve got a lot of time ahead in your career and you’ve achieved so much already, or does it make you hungrier to win more in the years to come? Egan Bernal: Neither. I will continue racing with the same attitude that I’ve always had. I’ve always wanted to win races, I’ve always wanted to train, too, and regardless of whether I’m winning or not, those feelings haven’t changed. PC: There are a lot of young riders making a massive impact on professional cycling right now and lots of theories as to why that’s happening. One is that with so…

The Ineos mechanics are hosing down the team bus parked outside their hotel on the outskirts of Liverpool, washing away the dirt and grit crusted on after another day of racing at the Tour of Britain. As Procycling wanders past, the Russian flag next to Pavel Sivakov’s name stands out among the Union Jacks and the ever-growing South American contingent of flags itemising the squad’s roster of nationalities. It therefore takes a minute to adjust when we meet with Sivakov to talk and the immaculate English that rolls off his tongue is laced with an obviously French accent. The name and the racing licence are Russian, but Sivakov’s facility with the language of Voltaire suggests that his upbringing has been more Paris than St Petersburg. Italian born, French raised and…

Elia Viviani’s transfer to Cofidis for 2020 was the key statement from team manager Cédric Vasseur that change is afoot at the French outfit, as they target a WorldTour slot. But the Italian’s arrival is one of many reasons Cofidis, one of cycling’s longest-standing sponsors, will have a different look next year. Among the riders who have so far been offloaded is temperamental high earner Nacer Bouhanni, who joins Arkéa-Samsic after two poor seasons. Fabio Sabatini also follows from Deceuninck-Quick Step along with Simone Consonni from UAE Emirates, to boost Viviani’s lead-out. Nathan Haas arrives from Katusha and offers climbing support but can also be a leader for the Ardennes classics - an area in which the squad has been lacking. Rated French climber Guillaume Martin will give the squad…

Though Rally’s sponsorship of the team dates back to 2016, the North American ProConti outfit can trace its history back to 2007, when it was set up as the Kelly Benefit Strategies team. Its current manager Eric Wohlberg joined as assistant DS in 2012, while Rally took over headline sponsorship in 2016. The squad has always been a mix of Americans and Canadians (Belgian Mark Hinnen and Australian Clay Murfet are the only exceptions) and its aim is to develop young talent with an ambitious calendar of racing, but also helping it along by hiring experienced riders coming back from European careers, like Tuft and, in recent years, Danny Pate. Two recent successes who have passed through their roster are Giro stage winner Chad Haga and Vuelta stage winner Sepp Kuss.…

1 PRIMOŽ ROGLIČ Points: 4,635.28 Jumbo-Visma, Age: 29 Wins Tre Valli Varesine and Giro dell’Emilia for 400 points 2 JULIAN ALAPHILIPPE Points: 3,699.95 Deceuninck-Quick Step, Age: 27 The Frenchman ended 2019 with 28th at the Yorkshire Worlds 3 JAKOB FUGLSANG Points: 3,472.5 Astana, Age: 34 Ended 2019 with three top 10s in the Italian autumn classics 4 EGAN BERNAL Points: 3,346.75 Team Ineos, Age: 22 Won Gran Piemonte and scored four more top 10s in Italy 5 ALEJANDRO VALVERDE Points: 3,297 Movistar, Age: 39 Second at GP Bruno Beghelli, Milano-Torino and Lombardy 6 GREG VAN AVERMAET Points: 2,947.33 CCC Team, Age: 34 Ended his 2019 season with eighth at the Worlds RR 7 PASCAL ACKERMANN Points: 2,487 Bora-Hansgrohe, Age: 25 Won Gooikse Pijl, second at the Münsterland Giro 8 ALEXANDER…

TEAM KATUSHA - ALPECIN Last time we spoke it was two nights before Worlds - something I’d worked very hard towards for a very long time. One month later, I’ve got a little bit of padding around my waist, my strict diet and core regime has gone out the window, and Nandos has re-emerged as top of my eatery holes. Fifth place though. Seven seconds off a medal. It was a tiny gap that actually I was more okay with than I thought I would be. I stuck to the pacing plan as religiously as I could, I lost nothing in the corners and just generally made no mistakes so that seven seconds comes in aero or training or nutrition, or something outside of my control on the day. Amazingly…

Cycling careers, especially those of young riders, are planned, not improvised. But nobody told Tadej Pogacar that. He turned 21 this autumn, but in his short professional career, which only dates back to January this year, he’s raced brilliantly at events in which he wasn’t even meant to take part. The best-known case, of course, is the 2019 Vuelta a España, where the decision by UAE Emirates to include a 20-year-old WorldTour debutant in their Spanish line-up was only taken this summer. For the first third of the season, team management had insisted that the Slovenian’s grand tour debut would not be until 2020, to avoid the risk of burnout. But that was before he became the youngest ever winner of a WorldTour stage race in the Tour of California…

SERGIO HIGUITA Colombia Born: August 1 1997 Age: 22 Team: EF Education First Best result: Stage win, Vuelta a España 2019 Sergio Higuita was just 18 years old when he recorded his first top-10 result in a professional race. In July 2016, riding for Manzana Postobón, he took part in the Prueba Villafranca event and finished in a group of 16 riders that sprinted for seventh place, 46 seconds behind winner Simon Yates. The Colombian spent three seasons with the ProContinental squad Manzana from his home country, before transferring for three months to Fundación-Euskadi at the start of 2019, then joining EF Education First on May 1. His first race with the American team was the Tour of California, and he came within a whisker of winning, finishing runner-up 16…

An hour after finishing the time trial at the Tour of Britain, Erick Rowsell is sat inside the Madison-Genesis van in a car park alongside Pershore Abbey. He’s not stretching or resting, nor reading the road book to prepare for tomorrow’s stage, but is busy writing his CV. It’s the first time the 29-year-old has had to do one since he was at school. It’s all a bit daunting, even though Rowsell is one of the longest serving and most experienced riders on the British scene. “Can you just check it in a minute for me?” he asks with a smile. Rowsell’s face is cheerful but he’s had time to get used to his fate, that the Tour of Britain would be his last race as a professional rider, after…

From Europe, it’s a long way to California. And it’s an even longer way back. Trek-Segafredo’s Ruth Winder is proof of that. It’s the clever thing to do to identify apparently conflicting aspects of an individual’s personality, upbringing or character and describe the delicate balance between them as tension. I would do the same with Winder, except the tension is between her background as a Keighley-born Yorkshirewoman and an upbringing in California, and there’s nothing tense about Californians. Winder self-identifies as Californian, although she lives in Boulder, Colorado, these days. The itinerant life of a pro cyclist means that home is wherever the suitcase is anyway, though ironically when we met to talk, we were in California at Winder’s home race, the Tour of California. “I consider myself Californian,” she…